Original Article

Neonatal Nutritional Risk Screening Tool: Turkish Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

Background: It is extremely important and necessary to make nutrition screening to determine the risk of nutrition in the newborn and the problems that may develop. Nutrition screening can be screened by determining the nutritional needs of the patient and timely and effective nutritional support can be provided by early intervention. The study was conducted to evaluate the Turkish validity and reliability of the Neonatal Nutritional Risk Screening Tool. Methods: The study, which had a methodological design, was conducted in the newborn clinic of a university hospital. A total of 402 infants who had the inclusion criteria constituted the sampling of the study. Results: In this Turkish adaptation study, NNRST was calculated to have 43.31% sensitivity, 99.45% specificity, 98.94% positive predictive value, and 59.80% negative predictive value. The results of the NNRST evaluation and the reference test indicate a significant correlation [r = 0.501, p = 0.000]. The validity of the content was examined by calculating the Spearman Correlation Coefficient between each item score and the total score and the correlations between the total score and each item were found positive. The Spearman Correlation Coefficients received a value within the range of 0.245-0.767. Conclusion: It can be argued that NNRST, which is adapted to Turkish, has a high power to effectively screen/distinguish healthy newborns in terms of nutritional risk.This tool can be used by healthcare professionals to screen a nutritional risk in hospitalized newborns.